Heir of Fire Read Free Page A

it down to the alley, where the shadows momentarily blinded her. She braced a hand on the cool stone wall, letting her eyes adjust, willing her head to stop spinning. A mess—­she was a gods-­damned mess. She wondered when she’d bother to stop being one.
    Th e tang and reek of the woman hit Celaena before she saw her. Th en wide, yellowed eyes ­were in her face, and a pair of withered, cracked lips parted to hiss, “Slattern! Don’t let me catch you in front of my door again!”
    Celaena pulled back, blinking at the vagrant woman—­and at her door, which . . . was just an alcove in the wall, crammed with rubbish and what had to be sacks of the woman’s belongings. Th e woman herself was hunched, her hair unwashed and teeth a ruin of stumps. Celaena blinked again, the woman’s face coming into focus. Furious, half-­mad, and fi lthy.
    Celaena held up her hands, backing away a step, then another. “Sorry.”
    Th e woman spat a wad of phlegm onto the cobblestones an inch from Celaena’s dusty boots. Failing to muster the energy to be disgusted or furious, Celaena would have walked away had she not glimpsed herself as she raised her dull gaze from the glob.
    Dirty clothes—­stained and dusty and torn. Not to mention, she smelled atrocious , and this vagrant woman had mistaken her for . . . for a fellow vagrant, competing for space on the streets.
    Well. ­Wasn’t that just wonderful . An all-­time low, even for her. Perhaps it’d be funny one day, if she bothered to remember it. She ­couldn’t recall the last time she’d laughed.
    At least she could take some comfort in knowing that it ­couldn’t get worse.
    But then a deep male voice chuckled from the shadows behind her.
    2
    Th e man—­male—down the alley was Fae.
    A ft er ten years, a ft er all the executions and burnings, a Fae male was prowling toward her. Pure, solid Fae. Th ere was no escaping him as he emerged from the shadows yards away. Th e vagrant in the alcove and the others along the alley fell so quiet Celaena could again hear those bells ringing in the distant mountains.
    Tall, broad-­shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty sha ft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming.
    As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines ­weren’t enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-­whimpering madwoman behind Celaena, a wicked-­looking tattoo was ­etched down the le ft side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-­kissed skin.
    Th e markings could easily have been decorative, but she still remembered enough of the Fae language to recognize them as words, even in such an artistic rendering. Starting at his temple, the tattoo fl owed over his jaw and down his neck, where it disappeared beneath the pale surcoat and cloak he wore. She had a feeling the markings continued down the rest of him, too, concealed along with at least half a dozen weapons. As she reached into her cloak for her own hidden dagger, she realized he might have been handsome ­were it not for the promise of violence in his pine-­green eyes.
    It would have been a mistake to call him young—­just as it would have been a mistake to call him anything but a warrior, even without the sword strapped across his back and the vicious knives at his sides. He moved with lethal grace and surety, scanning the alley as if he ­were walking onto a killing fi eld.
    Th e hilt of the dagger was warm in her hand, and Celaena adjusted her stance, surprised to be feeling—­fear. And enough of it that it cleared the heavy fog that had been clouding her senses these past few weeks.
    Th e Fae warrior stalked down the alley, his knee-­high leather boots silent on the cobblestones. Some of the loiterers shrank back; some bolted for the